Tuesday, February 23, 2016

My Tempting Highlander

Prologue

Ronan shifted in the saddle, wishing for the thousandth time his
heritage had been different. What would life have been like if he hadna been
cursed whilst still in the womb? A great deal shorter. His bitter laugh
misted in the cooling air of the early evening wood. Born in A.D. 900, the curse had accompanied him
through three centuries searching for the one prophesied to set him free.

Damn
his father—victim to an evil-hearted temptress. Old
Domnall had descended from the royal house of Alpine, king in fact, and he’d
found a rare exotic beauty to take as his wife. Not only did the woman’s looks
cause men to stop and stare, ’twas rumored she possessed chilling and
unexplainable powers. As it turned out, the tales were not rumors at all.

After a few short years of marriage, Domnall discovered his wife’s
many talents didn’t include giving him the one thing in life he truly desired:
an heir. The self-professed witch and high priestess to the mighty Fates was
barren. So Domnall took another to his bed and bade his mistress give him a
son. Ronan’s mother, Iona, the King of Alba’s favored leman, adored her king
and would grant him anything within her power.

Unlike Domnall’s wife, Iona conceived quickly. The king was
overjoyed and swore to embrace the illegitimate spawn as his rightful heir, for
the child surely had to be a son. His queen’s jealous rage knew no boundaries.
The day she learned of Ronan’s conception, the sky darkened with black
lightning-filled clouds and all the land rolled and shook with her anger.

Ronan urged his mount to a faster pace as his mother’s whispered
recounts echoed through his mind. Iona had told him of the ear-splitting boom
that had rattled the mountains one last time before all fell silent. Tears
always broke his mother’s voice when she told of the unseen claws forcing her
down to her hands and knees. Many a time, with a hopeless whisper into his
thoughts, Máthair
had recounted the terrible pain as her body shifted and
changed into the form of a great white wolf.

Ronan remembered the witch’s curse as though he’d heard it
firsthand. How many times had his mentor, Graham, and Máthair told
him how the dark sorceress had cackled with glee as she had pointed at the wolf
and claimed that Ronan’s mother had finally taken the form of the worthless
bitch she truly was?

Then the evil one had proclaimed that Domnall would die within the
next year, childless but for the bastard cub that the wolf Iona carried in her
womb. The royal line would die out until the day the young wolf cub discovered how
to shift into the form of a man and find the woman possessing three specific
qualities: lightness
of step, a soothing touch, and sight for the
unseen.

If the man able to shift into a wolf at will found such a woman and
married her, the curse would be broken and all would be set a’right. But if he
erred and chose the wrong mate, his wife and any child she attempted to bear
him would die within a year of their ill-fated union.

A grumbling roar thundered to his left and the sound of snapping
tree trunks and branches followed. Ronan shrugged his heavy wool mantle looser
about his throat and urged his horse onward. Graham had insisted on escorting
them to the farthest boundary the curse allowed the mentor to go. The
protective mists surrounding Draegonmare—only passable if one knew the ancient
words to part the fog: a mundo ultra, a
world beyond—grew thin this far from the loch so Graham dared not risk taking
to the sky. Pure grace by water, soft as a melody by air, the dragon Graham
wallowed worse than a mired cow when it came to walking across thickly wooded
land.

Twenty-one summers of age and full of himself, Graham MacTavish had
been mesmerized by the spectacle when King Domnall had ordered his crazed wife
drowned in the loch for her evil doings and witchery. Head held high, arms
lashed to her sides, and dark curls whipping about her naked body, the enraged
queen was the most intoxicating beauty the lad Graham had ever seen. The
conniving temptress perceived the young man’s interest and in one last attempt
to save herself, she entered his mind, whispering all the erotic pleasures
she’d teach Graham if he would but save her.

Graham nearly stepped forward, but as the rope swung the witch out
over the water, his flesh grew cold at the hideous reflection the condemned
woman cast across the water’s surface. The beautiful witch’s truly hideous
form—the blackness of her heart and soul—was revealed by the pure waters of
Loch Ness. Flinching, Graham turned away.

Before the queen’s head disappeared beneath the waves, she cursed
Graham to become a creature even more horrendous than the reflection he’d seen
and be bound to Ronan as they wandered through eternity searching for the one
woman to break the curse. Dragon by day, man by night, Graham guarded Iona the
wolf and her cub and later mentored Ronan when he learned to shift into a man.

“What a trio we are: wolf, dragon and . . .” Ronan bit back the
word. Shifter.
He sat straighter in the saddle, raising one hand in
farewell as his mount broke through the last of the boundary mists. “May the
gods favor us this time, my friend. Pray Mairi Sinclair is the one.”

Graham saluted with an exploding volley of flames above the treetops
then rumbled, “Let it be so.”